Yes, the final score was impressive. And, each of the eight goals scored by the Calgary Flames in a lopsided (sad, really) 8-1 win over the Edmonton Oilers was worth watching on the late viewing of the Hockey Night in Canada broadcast.

Getting there at any age is amazing. Getting there as a kid? Well, that’s another thing completely. What deficiencies, David Jones is asked, kept him from skating in the National Hockey League as a teenager?

With the collapse, they droop to 6-11-3.
In their last 15 dates, they are 3-11-1.
And the Oilers? They’re no snarling heck, either, having gone 1-9-1 in their previous 11. Which makes the Flames’ latest groaner all the more damning.
Post-game, dressing-room inhabitants were stunned.
"Awful," Matt Stajan said when asked about the third period. "We came out and gave them a goal early. After that, they had all the momentum. You can’t play this way in this league. You give that team an inch and they get one? They’re going to take advantage. That’s just a terrible third period by us. I can’t explain it. The last few games, we’re going through spurts where we just fall apart.

Jaromir Jagr, post-practice, is getting shoved up and down the Scotiabank Saddledome corridor. The New Jersey Devils winger — clad in underwear and sneakers, carrying a stick — assumes a hockey position, kind of a crouch. Then, at his urging, one of the team’s staffers pushes him over. Or, at least, tries to.

There was nothing factually incorrect in Edmonton Oilers president of hockey operations Kevin Lowe’s remarks the other day, during the formal firing of general manager Steve Tambellini, when he said that the organization likes all of its fans, but likes the ones who pay to get in just a little bit better. Any National Hockey League team that tells you different is fudging the truth.

Issued from the boss’s pulpit earlier in the day had been a hopeful prediction. Calgary Flames general manager Jay Feaster noted that his employees, with the National Hockey League’s trade deadline finally behind them, are likely to play better.

Is this, finally, the year? The day of reckoning this town has secretly dreaded, knew had to arrive someday, deep in its most insecure places. Is that the northern wolf we hear clawing frantically at the door?

The boss himself has taken note of the grit — and its insufficient levels locally. Which makes it no surprise that Jay Feaster, as general manager of the Calgary Flames, is on the lookout for sandpaper. Maybe Steve Begin is the answer. Maybe Brad Winchester. Maybe both.

On that 2000-2001 championship team in Colorado, Bob Hartley was blessed to have Joe Sakic, Peter Forsberg, a young, undamaged Chris Drury and old bucket-’o-bolts himself, Stephane Yelle (with all his body parts more or less still attached; some, albeit, by means of duct tape), operating down Main Street.

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